_{The Kaleetan on a typical winter’s day in December 2020. Photo courtesy of Matt Masuoka.}

CLASS: Super

BUILT/REBUILT: 1967/1999 National Steel and Shipbuilding Company, San Diego, CA./ Lake Union Drydock/Todd Shipyard, Seattle, WA

OFFICIAL NUMBER: D508604.  CALL SIGN: WY2512

L/B/D: 382 x 73 x 19 GROSS/NET TONS: 2704/1214 PASSENGERS/AUTOS: 2000/144

PROPULSION: 4 EMD 645 Diesel Electric, 8000 HP SPEED: 17 knots

NAME TRANSLATION: Chinook, “arrow.”

FINAL DISPOSITION: In service, 2024.

HISTORY

The Kaleetan entered service in January 1968, and was sent to the Seattle-Winslow route, allowing the Illahee to be cut loose for the Kingston run.  She was joined on the route later that year by the Elwha.

With the arrival of the Jumbo Class in 1973, the Elwha and Kaleetan were reassigned. The Kaleetan went to the San Juan Islands, a route she would call home for the next 25 years, and the Elwha would fill in as needed, appearing at Kingston and Bremerton until finding a more permanent home in the San Juan Islands in the early 1980’s.

The class was scheduled for major upgrading in the 1990’s. The Elwha started the program, but the delays and extra expense in repairing the storm damage resulted in her cabin getting the short shrift. The Kaleetan and Yakima were completely refurbished, leaving no trace of their plain and somewhat austere interiors.

The Kaleetan emerged from the Lake Union Drydock Company in the fall of 1999 having had a multimillionaire-dollar mid-life upgrade. Steel was replaced, asbestos removed, the interior gutted and replaced, and the engines rebuilt. After the work was finished, she returned to her familiar haunt, the San Juan Islands, where she had been since leaving the Winslow route in the early 1970’s, but the ferry began to split its time between the summer season in the islands and the fall and winter on the Bremerton run.  It was soon discovered that when a Super Class boat was put down at Bremerton, some of the traffic would bleed off the over-taxed Seattle-Winslow route.

Passengers who were often crammed into an Issaquah Class ferry for the 6:25 AM sailing out of Bremerton found themselves in a vessel that had room for 1000 more souls.  Everyone being able to sit comfortably became a much-appreciated luxury.  In addition, the narrow beam of the Kaleetan allowed her to travel through Rich Passage at full speed (the Super Class, save for the Elwha, throw off a very minimal wake) which shaved more than a few minutes off the commute.

Following her refurbishment, the Kaleetan began to spend less and less time in the Islands and more time on the Bremerton run, usually opposite the Kitsap, but frequently paired with the Walla Walla. The Kaleetan would return for summers in the San Juans.

The ferry was pulled out of service for a few months in 2005 to have an elevator installed, making her completely ADA compliant. She then returned to the San Juans before being assigned to the Bremerton route while the Yakima had an elevator put in at Lake Union Drydock company on Lake Union.

Today the Kaleetan and Yakima are the last two of the Super Class vessels in service and are due to be retired by 2028–assuming that the state can get replacement vessels on the water by then. Since the COVID pandemic, and with Bremerton down to one boat (as of August 2024) the state has kept the larger Walla Walla on the route to make up slightly for the loss of service on the run. The Kaleetan has roamed around much more, filling in at Bainbridge, Kingston, and the San Juan Islands.